The Rescue of Hannah Anderson, Part 6

Denielle's encounter with James DiMaggio Sr

More of Hannah's interview

This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>more you know.

>>>the
horseback riders
had with 99% certainty encountered the two in the back country.

>>i feel like all of us were sent here for a purpose. maybe this was just part of our ride.

>>following the riders' tip a rookie
state trooper
came up with a clincher. checking out a trail head, he caught a glint of reflective light under brush and tree limbs. he cleared away the branches and there it was. a cleverly concealed car with the vehicle identification number confirming it as
dimaggio
's.

>>by that fry evening, scores of local, state and
federal law
enforcement officers were converging on cascade, idaho, 75 miles north of boise to set up a
hostage rescuecommand post
. among their numbers was
san diego
-based marshal steve german. with a much reduced search grid,
dimaggio
was still out in the wild. the
u.s. marshall
felt the clock ticking to get to the girl in time.

>>it was a dire situation. i really truly believe her live was in grave danger.

>>the marshals job that saturday morning, a full week now since
hannah
had disappeared, was to get in a small plane and look down from 5,000 feet for a sign of
dimaggio
and his captive. it was all timber, gray rocks, no one home at first.

>>it was a tremendous
land mass
that we're talking about. but very rugged terrain. so movement would have been very slow. we had that going to our advantage.

>>dimaggio
and
hannah
were on foot in a vast wilderness with no roads out. but they had been spotted just three miles from the
salmon river
. whitewater rafters went down it every day. was it also a possible exit route for
uncle jim
and the teenager. ?

>>checkpoints were set up at the rafter's haul-out spots.

>>could they have made the river, could they have gotten on a raft? could they have made it to a highway down river and hitchhiked their way out?

>>the focal point was the mountain fishing area where the
horseback riders
run into the man and the teenager for the second time.

>>we circled morehead lake a couple times and just as we were getting ready to peel off of it, i thought i saw something on the
north side
. then it was like the light hit it just right and bam, there's a blue tent there.

>>a blue tent like the one the riders had seen. they had almost missed it. now they had a good hard look through their binoculars.

>>there's a male, blond fee may. then there's a cat. there's a small animal. able to identify a small animal. right there, we knew we had something extraordinarily valuable.

>>a
house cat
in the wilderness. it could only have been oliver.

>>it was a bingo moment in the
command post
down in cascade where andrea dearden a local sheriff's spokesperson was briefing the media. the
spotter plane
reporting back.

>>we heard him say there's a man, we see a female and we heard them say we see a gray animal. it's a cat.

>>and there you were.

>>that's when we knew.

>>that cat became the confirmation ultimately?

>>we had no doubt in our minds that that was
hannah
and
dimaggio
.

>>we had
dimaggio
, 100%.

>>now they had to get a team on the ground to rescue
hannah
. did
dimaggio
suspect from bumping into the horseback party or the aircraft above that he had been made?

>>you got to get to him.

>>logistics become a challenge because you can't land the helicopter in the camp without
dimaggio
knowing they're there.

>>now you have to worry whether he's clued to you and is this girl in terrible peril because here they come.

>>the window of opportunity was very small that day.

>>the outcome of the next few hours was anything but a sure bet. the
fbi hostage rescue team
had to assume he was armed. they would go in by helicopter.

>>there's a challenging landing. not a lot of
flat land
. they put that helicopter down a mile to two miles from the camp sight and then they began that two to 2 1/2 hour hike to surround the camp.

>>in
san diego
, a
thousand miles
away, the sheriff who committed all his resources to the case could now only stand by and sweat it out in
real time
.

>>one much our deputies was in the
command post
with an open line to us. we were getting simultaneous information as it was occurring in idaho.

>>the
command post
in two states waited silently.

>>that was probably the most tense time. we know that from what we can see, she's physically okay. so now we just need to get in and make that rescue.